Three Fourths
by fourheads
Summary: After the infarction, House is a fraction of what he used to be. And he plans to change that.
1. Lost Footing

~~~~~ _**A/N**_: Omgwows. I haven't updated/written anything fanfic-wise in _waaaay _too long, and I've missed it! Seriously. It's a nice escape, isn't it?

Anyways, I've stopped watching _Haus_, _Medical Doktors_ almost entirely, although I occasionally like to check in on jic the veteran ducks happen to pop in… which is too rare for me. ): It's not that I don't like the new team (Well, actually, I don't. I like them individually, rather than together. They're so _boring_ together.), it's just that the show isn't what _I _thought it used to be.

Btw I can't wait until they pull an Amber on Cuddy omgomg go away plz & take care of your baby you don't love~

Yeah so, THIS FIC TAKES PLACE IN SEASONS 1-3 (not really any specific period of time) AND IS MILDLY AU. Just an A/N warning for those of you who hate AU's, lol. But I promise, there's only one change; the old ducklings are still quacking away (season 1-3!fic, remember? No newbies.). You'll find out what it is. ;)

Read. Review. Enjoy~

_HOUSEMDHOUSEMDHOUSEMDHOUSEMDHOUSEMDHOUSEMD_

He plunked across the carpet, slowly.

Cameron watched with a sheepish smile that creased the skin where the concave slope of her cheeks overlapped the slight foreshadowing of laugh lines. Chase scratched at the bridge of his nose.

A lackadaisical Foreman hunched over the glass surface of the table, shoulders gathered against his neck, mouth tight, face pressed into the assembled reverse of his hands. He resembled the Thinker, cursing that he had been carved out of stone.

The familiar hiss of a running coffee pot cued Cameron to pour it. She rose from her seat as he entered the room, and glanced over at him, a simple, embryonic pleasure that often occurred thoughtlessly and grew to a habitual level.

He held her glance long enough to signal "Not yet," with a small, dissuading nod, and she pursued her lips into a fine, spuriously pained line so as to appear dejectedly understanding rather than nonchalant. She didn't want to appear _careless_.

A slight, piercing _clank_ followed the pot's swift movement back into its apparatus, and she returned to the chair.

She watched him furrow his brow as she leaned into the metal plate.

Worst case scenario, he was wildly depressed. Best case, he was mildly unfocused on medicine, and therefore mischievous. Either way, things would ultimately summarize into what ironically became known as, diagnostically-wise, "nicely", but Cameron figured his current disposition hovered somewhere inbetween.

House conjectured, with slight sarcasm, how horribly he would suffer today, and made a mental note to pinch her ass before the end of it. He excused it as animalistic therapy.

First, he would be forced to sift through several hours of clinic duty and simultaneously, "smile, goddamnit. The patients ease up when you look less like a grizzly bear and more like a tame, shaved one", as Cuddy had tastefully put it. At least he made the effort to do so… sometimes, but rather out of his own characteristic volatility than tendency to comply.

But that might've been pushing it; even Cuddy could hold only so tight a leash on him when it was purely fact that House worked best when the collar was completely off.

Today, he would _try_ to grin and bear it, but he couldn't deny the possibility of reneging any promises to keep his façade of quiet satisfaction from buckling under the sporadic bipolarity that would wipe it away with far more ease than it required to maintain. Especially on today of all days.

Clinic duty. That was the _last _chore he felt like whining through.

A good lot of the time, he would start off introductions either in the bowels of the clinic or, on the rarest of occasions, at a patient's bedside, by answering the most prevalent and likely question that rudimentary crassness ultimately stimulated them to ask, before they had the chance to ask it. Whether out of morbid curiosity or the curse of being calculated to refer to human gaucheness to poorly remedy sudden discomfort, many patients wanted to ask, knew that they shouldn't, and did anyway.

He'd grip the rubber handles of the crutches, expertly swing his leg so that it extended past his body and pulled his waist forward in turn, and hoist his upper torso so as to trigger his arms to transitorily waver and guide the crutches across the floor. He had created this sort of idiosyncratic, exaggerated movement, for patients alone, in order to appear as equally noticeable if he were mentally crippled as well. God forbid he should _bore _his victims after subsequently frightening the shit out of them with what the crutches supported.

"War vet," he would say, grinning humbly, after they had their moment to stare.

But now, his mind was far away: nowhere near contemplating how to conjure a specious smile for faces that wouldn't remember it, or clocking into diagnostic mode.

Fogging the thoughts in his head, House saw the forgotten figure of a man ten years younger, walking straight-legged into his office, both pant legs crinkling with the rhythmic, clockwork expertise of having the muscles, tendons, and bone inside them doing what they were supposed to be doing. With such ease.

He scowled, then looking down at where two feet should have been looking up at him.

"Something wrong?" Chase inquired. He was watching House's shifting expression, although, penniless for his thoughts, an expression of genuine interest was prevalent in neither Chase's tone nor on his face.

House didn't answer, but seemed to be inwardly struggling to release something in a deliberate manner, slowly conjecturing how to go about it.

He manipulated the crutches to turn on their axes and maneuvered his body so as to face the window and avoid the faces of his team.

Looking outside the venetian blinds, he watched as overcast clouds smuggled sunlight behind thick blankets of swelling rain; their pockets were loosening as droplets began to seep from thin, weakening crevices that hung over the parched fields just beyond the hospital. His eyes darted across the gray folds, expecting the fog-veiled ceiling to cave in at random, releasing its restrained torrents of a storm anxiously biding its time.

He had to let it out. He didn't want to, be he had to.

They'd all find out eventually, anyway, and swarm him with questions and faux-concern (well, Cameron's wouldn't be, at least). It had taken three years, but House had finally figured out that even when it wasn't _he_ sifting through the debris of chatter and smearing it behind unknowing, but otherwise curious ears, word in a hospital traveled fast.

Getting it over with now would save building up a didactic novella of excuses and words meant to turn his team off to the subject. It would save him his breath, time, and _forced_ time with each of the three doctors, and ultimately, Cuddy. All but the onslaught of the unpleasant series of events that was sure to follow.

"Ducklings," he beseeched, too cheerfully for the usual staleness of the diagnostic suite.

The fixed necks and static heads of f each doctor refused to budge, as eyes traveling to adjacent faces met, quizzical. House didn't need to see their expressions to know they were twisting uncomfortably.

He leaned, straining against one crutch and waving his free hand in the air as if trying to grasp the right words that wavered just beyond his reach.

House betrayed his persona and let out a worldly sigh, although it didn't unearth the existence of a burden marked by depression, grief, or apprehension.

"What do you know about…" he cut himself off, and from the team's perspective, was still parading the tailcoat of his jacket. His gaze resided at the floor.

"About what?" Foreman pressed, mildly insistent. He and Cameron responded physically simultaneously, he straightening his angular posture and she perking the crown of her head upward, both involuntarily and out of sudden inquisitiveness.

The unmasked fear in Cameron's voice matched the dread in her disquieted eyes. Their wideness drew overstated angles across her face. "House?" she asked, begging herself not to lose firmness in her tone. She made to stand again but her movement against the metal chair stimulated the seat and legs to slide past one another in screeching, creaking unison.

House did not turn around to prevent her from nearing him. He struggled to keep from rolling his eyes, but this was a priceless gem of an occasion where he felt the didacticism of constraint, his conscience nudging to be appropriate. He simply raised his hand as a signal for her to stay where she was.

Once they heard it, he knew they would realize that they were overreacting and would wipe their brows, relieved (again, Cameron would, at least), but still; the necessity to say anything without a double entendre, his barriers completely shattered, acted as a mighty blow against his insecurity in informing them, anyone so openly about a personal matter.

But it was too late now to avoid it now.

House, disgustedly rubbed the rigid edge of the end root of his right leg where it would have met the meat of a thigh, and turned to face them.

"Prosthetic limbs."

( ~ )

_TBC_.


	2. The Good Doctor

"I wish you'd let me finish a sentence, doctor."

The irony of his comment was that there were no audible (nor visible) signs of annoyance or frustration in Dr. Stadler's voice. His words melded infallibly with his comforting tone: no pleas for cooperation, no trace of an unraveling temper. Just a simple, blanket statement meant as nothing more than a rather tolerance-induced method of getting House to allow himself to be the patient.

And to the dismay of the less emotionally stable doctor of the two, the orthopaedist's generally mild disposition of unimpeachable emotional firmness was incapable of even budging in the slightest. No matter how House would irrationally snap at the man's every word, Stadler's blood refused to boil.

Referring to the doctor's words, House snorted. He wished the kindly-looking man was capable of being even slightly riled up, but as of late, he was beginning to see that his efforts were proving futile; Dr. Elliott Stadler, whom Cuddy had referred to as, "New Jersey's most highly-respected and trusted hands in the department of functioning medical aesthetics and design," and whom House insisted on calling, "the _literal _version of a plastic surgeon", or, the term he favored, "Doctor Nub-be-Gone", was the equivalent of an emotional pillar. The damn Atlas just wouldn't shrug.

"So, _Doc Stad_, let's get all this cyborg crap over with. On the rocks. I'm looking to run a 5k in March," he said, clapping his hand as if harshly beckoning a waiter to tie a bib around his neck.

He knew the following would be imminent. _Aaaaand here comes the smile_, he thought

From House's point of view, Dr. Stadler's response, the predicted smile emanating sheer tranquility, was the most revolting spectacle of inner peace he could have imagined possible; the ascending muscles of his lips caused two or three slight, creasing folds to form just above his mouth's upward tug, shaping laugh lines that resembled the personification of a well-aged wine. And worse yet, the crow's feet juxtaposing his eyes appeared to pull into two supplementary, gently contended c-curves. Not _one _smile on Gandhi's soggy face, but _three_.

House felt the wonderfully-unfounded palpitations of hate hum in his ears.

_Pfft_, he spat internally. The free-of-charge smiles, innumerable certificates of achievement and teary-eyed letters of gratuity embellishing his office walls, and ceramic mug stuffed with various lollipops that House had been eyeing from the moment of his arrival didn't mean that the good doctor was worth the forty-five minute ass-on-seat brigade over to his practice.

If he hadn't already offered him the exalted mug of lollipops, House would have taken a sucker and kindly advised the good doctor where he could shove it. But then he wouldn't get his robotic leg so… _something_ had to give.

House, surprisingly two years younger than Stadler, studied the orthopaedist's drooping features and wrinkled hands. But to his surprise, one appeared far smoother than the other.

It was a prosthetic.

"You're going to shove a metal leg-tampon inside me using… _that?_" He inquired, carelessly unreserved about avoiding the sensitivity of the topic. His expression was one of disgust.

"I don't perform the surgery, Dr. House. I simply design the prosthetic blueprints and wiring relevant to the both the limb and patient's nervous system," He began, mildly didactic.

"The model I tailor to function with your body is constructed at a Michigan-based factory, shipped here, where I will inspect it, and grant the OK for its attachment, given that the structure and wiring are _explicitly _identical to my design. I then recommend several previously-entrusted surgeons from which you will choose to attach your new leg."

He then added, "And just to clear things up about myself, since you chose to bring up the subject, I view my hand as a part of me, an extension that has always been present in my physical workup. I simply lost it, and was ultimately able to reconstruct it. This is my _hand_, Dr. House. I do not view this or any other products of my work as prosthetics: what you easily call '_fake'_ limbs. No matter what material they are made of, and no matter if they require 'unnatural' attention and care, you _must _see this as a _leg_. Otherwise, the procedure, as well as my times and yours, will be all for naught, because If you cannot accept this as a part of you, as _true_, neither will your body."

It was the first slip of Stadler's composure, an unexpected terseness where the levity was wiped completely from his face.

"There lies the obstacle of allowing yourself to have faith," He concluded. His eyes were narrowed, and House felt him staring into the transparency of his thoughts.

"Fine." House said equally as curt and toneless. "But try to get pissed off more often; no more smiles."

Stadler clicked the ballpoint of his pen, "Fair enough." He regained his easy composure and raised the attached hand as he bowed his head, signaling his cooperation.

House, sensing a tinge of discomfort between the two of them, shifted his gaze from the hand to his own, settled in his lap.

There was just something he couldn't understand the guy.

"So, let's begin, shall we? Alright... I'm going to ask a series of simple medical questions, and then we'll move on to the emotional stuff, hm? Bear with me." Another syrupy smile, accompanied by the sudden prominence of several layered, rubbery chins.

House winced with every declarative sentence that ended sounding more like a question that he wouldn't have a chance to respond to with 'how about no'.

"_Anything_ for you, Doc," House exaggeratedly returned the smile. "I'll have you know that I'm a very emotionally open man."

He heard a bitter laugh emanate from behind him. Chase stood in the doorway with his arms crossed against his chest. He entered the room.

Stadler's eyes briefly drifted to Chase, then returned to House. "So I've heard from your colleagues," he said, his tone unbiased. House began to ask the orthopaedist when and where he had spoken to his team, forty-five minutes from the remote office building, when Stadler interrupted him. "Princeton is a smaller town than you think, Doctor."

House shrugged. He heard Chase shuffle against the wall and shift the weight from one leg to the other.

If it weren't for the rich brat's inexplicable determination in insisting that he accompany the ring leader of Princeton's diagnostic department, House would have been perfectly happy going alone.

Unfortunately for him, that wasn't the case, and, surprisingly, House was fully aware that Chase would make a grand entrance to his first appointment and, most likely, several after.

It would have been easy enough for him to have lost the koala bear at the inconspicuous turn towards the path of the prosthetics center, but if it weren't for the simple fact that revving his bike's engine past the limit of sixty-five miles per hour would cause gravity to take its toll on the unevenly distributed weight of his body and fling him off the seat, he would have unquestionably done so. So Chase managed to tail close behind.

Now, he was sitting in Dr. Elliott Stadler's office, the man himself sitting erect, across House from behind his desk, hands comfortably folded. Behind House, who chose to completely ignore him, Chase made himself comfortable and leaned against the densely-darkened corner of two walls, eyeing the various arm, leg, hand, and foot-shaped contraptions of meshed flesh-colored plastic and strikingly brilliant steel that adorned the extra-wide bookcase behind Stadler.

Chase's eyes were peculiarly intense.

"Doctor House, I have great respect for what you do. Even in this remote little building, we're well aware of the lengths you go to for your patients, in your tailored way, of course. Just know that you should expect nothing less from my staff and I. You're in very capable hands."

House stared back at him, silent.

"Right then. Question number one; do you feel any sensation whatsoever at the site of the amputation…"

(~)

_TBC_. Comments? (:


End file.
